Reason #89 I’m So Grateful To Be An Entrepreneur & How To Feed A Cat That Won’t Eat

A few weeks back one of my cats named Dusty Rose stopped eating…. After exhausting every trick in my book I bundled her up, got on the rental bike and pedaled off to the vet.

After a complete exam, they did an x-ray and found she had a partial obstruction (giant hairball) and needed to be admitted to the pet hospital 😿

Fortunately, the skilled and fast-acting vet here in Japan was able to diagnose immediately. Unfortunately, this meant the cat had to stay overnight, and as it turns out she ended up being in there for 6 long days and nights! 😿 😿 😿

I rode over and visited her every day and it broke my heart to see her actually getting worse. She needed an IV for fluids to get things moving 💩 but because she wouldn’t eat she also needed a feeding tube that went through her nose!

This also meant she needed to wear the dreaded cone so she couldn’t rip the hose out, even though it had been glued to her fur in several places.

The first 2 days she was fine, not happy but fine. Then she rightly lost her sense of humor about this and she became pee-oed! 😤 She was miserable.

The worst was saying goodbye for the day and leaving her in that cage for another day…… 💔 OMG I wish there was a way to somehow explain things at times like these!

By day-5 I was in tears to see her pacing the generous cage, drooling incessantly, wet, cold, dirty, restricted in movement with the cone and tubes… It was awful!

That night my husband and I decided we were bringing her home the next day no matter what, this just could not go on any longer. Thankfully the vet agreed.

That cat was never so happy to get in her travel crate 😼

I had to take her back to the vet for a check-up every day for the next 5 days, then we started getting a few days off, which was great!

I knew what I was in for when I first brought her home because she was still not eating and the vet was very clear that if she did not start eating in the next 1-2 days she would need a semi-permanent esophageal feeding tube.

Whatever you’re imagining about that is right. NOT a good option.

Once a cat stops eating it’s very difficult to get it to start again.

At this point, I was unprepared and inexperienced at force-feeding a cat…. but I had a few ideas and was so happy to find an unused hair-color bottle – the squeeze kind.

Last year I had just bought a whole bunch of new hair coloring supplies before I decided to stop coloring my hair and try to embrace (or at least live with) all that silver shining through…..

I thought ‘Look! Here’s another positive thing to come from getting off the hair dye, LOL”.

Anyway, I realized that this was not a food-safe bottle so I lined it with a food storage bag and then made a right mess of filling it with a food puree I made.

As it was heating up I wrapped that cat up in a towel and got her ready for the fun new experience! HA!

Even on the first go it went pretty good aside from me missing, her spitting some out and splatter that was projected off her cheeks whenever she shook her head.

Needles to say, we both got waaaaay better at this especially when I got the right, small size, squeezable bottle with a silicone tip that she, of course, chewed off!

Even with barely any tip, this worked link a charm once I figured out the right slow-pouring consistency to make. The only thing that would have been better is if it were a small, wide-mouth bottle that was easier to fill.

This was a MASSIVE improvement over the giant syringe the vet gave me that was so big I couldn’t even squeeze the plunger down to start the flow when it was full. It was also super tight and you know what that means, big blobs of food, and that is a fast track to this thing not working.

Even her sister; Shelby, was unimpressed with the giant syringe!

I’m not sure when, but at some point Dusty realized that I was helping her and the food in her belly felt good. So the struggle subsided which is good since I had to feed her 4 times a day in the beginning. Over the first number of days when we were both figuring this out, one feeding took about 45 minutes!

(You can watch it in action if you want!)

The vet told me this could backfire and if I wasn’t careful she could easily develop food-aversion syndrome in which case the esophageal feeding tube would have been the only option.

To say I was motivated would be a grave understatement, LOL!

Thankfully she took to it and today we are down to 1 feeding every day 🤸‍♀️ and she is eating more and more on her own and is getting her old spunk back too!

Thank You Thank You Thank You

It is 4-weeks to the day since she has been home and the vomiting and diarrhea have nearly stopped now. 🙏

To say I am grateful is a huge understatement. My cat is going to be fine and things are nearly back to normal here.

I’ll tell you what though….. I am also super grateful that I’m an entrepreneur and didn’t have to worry about the time it was going to take me to nurse her back to health, or how much the vet bill was going to cost to get my little fur baby healthy again.

Can you imagine telling your boss that you need to take 10 days off to stay home with a sick cat? 🤔


#entrepreneurlife
#passiveincomefromhome
#furbabiesrock

Heather

The Expat Entrepreneur

Heather is an online business expert who specializes in matching people and their resources with the best business model to offer that individual the highest chance of succeeding at an online business. She is also a skilled digital marketer who promotes high-caliber programs and services that she has personally vetted to her inner circle.